Sowing art, reaping peace: Toward a framework for evaluating arts-based peacebuilding

Arts-based approaches to preventing and resolving conflict garner both accolades and skepticism. Constructive discussion of arts' effectiveness for peacebuilding is lacking, due to certain challenges. First, art is both a means for peacebuilding and an end in itself, and people weight these priorities differently. Second, arts may bring about results which are hard to measure---through processes of change which defy linear models. Therefore, evaluating arts-based peacebuilding (ABP) has proven difficult. To address this problem, the thesis analyzes 18 interviews with practitioners, evaluators, and scholars, as well as three illustrative evaluation reports. The thesis defines ABP in the context of the peacebuilding field, offering a typology for ABP which emphasizes process. Additionally, the thesis identifies key challenges of evaluating ABP and proposes a model for balancing process-oriented and results-oriented evaluation of ABP. Finally, it concludes with a framework for practitioners, evaluators, funders, and scholars to think about ABP's effectiveness.